


icarian leap

by astronaut (avioxe)



Category: Produce 101 (TV), UP10TION, X1 (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Mythology References, Sci-Fi Elements, astronaut jinhyuk, astrophysicist wooseok, magical realism elements, near future setting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-03 18:24:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20457461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avioxe/pseuds/astronaut
Summary: Sometimes, Wooseok realizes, it’s too hard to put your love into words. Sometimes sayingI love youisn’t enough. Sometimes you’re not even brave enough to say it.





	1. prelude: but i'm too clever, i only cry at night sometimes

**Author's Note:**

> hi, all, this is so close to my heart I cried when watching produce and these are my feelings about TOP media pair... I was absolutely over the moon when QL came out and they had a butterfly concept and everything because it was the PERFECT opportunity for me to nerd out and write about physics and astrophysics and also break every fact true about said topics on the way. the entire premise of this is, uh, against general belief about time travel and relativity... but it's just, such a concept. a killer concept. 
> 
> stars above, I hope you feel something from this. stars above, I hope you enjoy.

_We have not yet touched the stars, / nor are we forgiven_

—R. S. / Crush

_i._

When Wooseok was twenty-five and in university still, Jinhyuk would bring him flowers every time he would finish a paper, pass an exam, give a presentation. “You worked hard,” he would say, and every time Wooseok would feel like his throat was filling up. “Let’s go out to eat, to celebrate?” Every time Jinhyuk would take them both to the same place across from his apartment building, with the loud _ahjumma_ and the plastic covering on the table and the red awning out in front. Every time Jinhyuk would smile at him like he was the sun and Wooseok would want to kick him for it, as if Jinhyuk could help it, as if Jinhyuk knew how Wooseok felt.

“You won’t have to do this, soon,” Wooseok would always say after dinner, despite biting back his own smile. “I’ll finish my degree soon, and you can go someplace nicer,” and Jinhyuk would laugh, shake his head.

“_We_,” he would correct without fail, every time. “_We_ can go someplace nicer.”

“Okay,” Wooseok would say, looking at Jinhyuk’s gentle smile, his chest tight like it hurt. “Soon, I’ll find us something better than this.”

_ii._

In summertime Wooseok wakes up early, goes to work early, gets off early before the sun sets. He eats out alone most days, save for when he has work dinners. Each night he goes home to the empty apartment across the street from the restaurant with the red awning. Once a week, he folds laundry on the unused dining table. Once a month, he sits down on the sofa by the window to count rent. For the most part, it’s a routine: home at eight-thirty, the lights off at nine, lie in bed with phone until midnight.

Most nights he scrolls through his media feed in the flickering dark, the sound always off, the brightness always turned low, as if the dark were sentient and it wanted to be left undisturbed. It’s like he’s holding his breath, Wooseok thinks, for something, as if he’s waiting, as if he can’t bear anything but silence. As if he can’t bear silence either.

Sometimes he listens to voicemails, watches videos he can’t bear to delete. _Wooseok-ah, today I walked to see Hangang Bridge over Han River and there were flowers by the water and I thought of you. Wooseok-ah, today I took the bus out to see Incheon and I saw the ocean, so so blue… does it look the same when you see it too? Wooseok-ah, today I came by but you weren’t home. Wooseok-ah, call me soon? _

All of them are old, now. He swipes through his camera roll one last time.

_When,_ he realizes, _was the last time I took a photo? _

Regardless, he already knows the answer.

_None since. _

_iii. _

_Do you know, _Wooseok thinks,_ what it’s like to be lonely? _

_Not the kind of lonely after a party’s over, or after you see off your best friend at the airport. Not the kind of lonely when there’s nobody in the store with you or when you’re eating alone in an empty restaurant. _

_I mean lonely like when you’re walking down the street and it’s so filled with people you could choke, you could get carried away, and you’re still empty inside. I mean lonely like when the sun is out and the sky is bluer than anything you’ve seen before and everyone smiles at you as you pass by and you feel like you could cry. I mean lonely like when you’re at a barbecue restaurant with all your friends in the world and they’re laughing but your chest is a vacuum and you’ll cave in from your own gravity at any second. _

_Lonely like when you go home every night and sit at your dining table with the lights off. Lonely like even when you cry you’ll think that it’s okay to sob because no one will hear it. Lonely like how you start to believe no one can touch you until your coworker brushes up against you and you jump so bad you drop your laptop and you can’t even listen to his apology. Like that, like that lonely. _

_So lonely it doesn’t hurt. So lonely it doesn’t do anything anymore._

_Like this you would do anything. Like this you will do anything. _


	2. tell me about all this, and love too

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wooseok is braver when he dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahhh I'm so excited to keep on writing this, I could not stop thinking about it for the days since I wrote the last part. thank you all so much for your comments on the intro, they made me smile so much and kept me going when I ran into blocks for this chapter while writing. they're wonderful--please never stop, lmao, I thrive on them. I'm really grateful.

_I sleep. I dream. I make up things that I would never say. I say them very quietly._

—R.S.

In summer Jinhyuk is warm and dreamlike, his smile a streak of sunlight, his fingers dripping gold. Wooseok remembers it best the time they took the bus out together to Incheon and Jinhyuk ran barefoot along the beach, his pant legs wet up to the knees, a collection of pebbles in either hand to take home to Seoul. Wooseok thinks he was twenty-three, or twenty-four—this is what it’s like to get old, he thinks, when you can count back your age by your memories—and maybe he was falling in love by then already. He doesn’t remember, really, because it’s felt like forever since.

_I think I might be in love with you_, he had thought offhandedly, _would be an awfully romantic thing to say_. Maybe Jinhyuk would have laughed if he’d heard it.

That day, he had watched Jinhyuk and felt like something in him was coming undone. It wasn’t necessarily a bad feeling. When Jinhyuk had asked him on the bus back if he had enjoyed the trip, Wooseok didn’t tell him _yes, it was the best day of my summer_, but instead that it was fine, but he had a lot of work to finish. And both were true—it was just that one was safer than the other. He regrets it, now, but he still remembers how suddenly upset he’d get when Jinhyuk would grin and his heart would speed up. It was irrational and wild and Wooseok was afraid of the way it made him feel, like something in his chest was clawing its way past all the careful self-restraint he had practiced for years. Think in numbers was his motto. Think in logic, think in what you can prove: think cold, concrete, scientific.

In Wooseok’s memory Jinhyuk is emotion like something wild. Always _is_, never _was_: it doesn’t matter the season now. That afire smile is imprinted in his mind, something he sees often when he closes his eyes at night.

_You might not be here_, Wooseok thinks fiercely, _but I’ll drag my memories with me until my hands are bloody. I’ll cling on until the day I die._

_I’m sorry for everything. I love you._

At the university, Wooseok is an assistant professor in Astronomy. He teaches an intro course on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, and a seminar on Mondays and Wednesdays. He has two TAs, named Yohan and Hangyul. He has two co-workers near his age in his department, Seungyoun in Theoretical Physics and Seungwoo in Quantum Mechanics. He works in the observatory when he’s not teaching, although he can’t remember the last time he felt excited about his research. For someone in academia, that should be pretty alarming, but Wooseok honestly can’t remember the last time he felt excited in general, so he supposes it’s good enough.

Wooseok has a Ph.D in astrophysics, focus in relativity, and is assistant professor at a decent university in Seoul. Wooseok also literally has, like, three friends on good days, a grand total of seven contacts in his phone, and is turning thirty in a few months but still lives alone in the same tiny apartment he had as a student. In a career sense, he’s probably winning. In a life sense, well, sometimes he gets the feeling he’s been somewhat behind.

“Hey, hyung,” says someone from behind him. Wooseok starts, almost drops his chalk before he realizes it’s just Yohan, laughing softly at him.

“That’s Professor Kim to you,” he corrects, pushing up his glasses and glaring at Yohan. “I’ve told you _not_ to call me that at work.”

Yohan grins. “Okay, _Professor_.” Wooseok kind of wants to strangle him right now, although it would be pretty hard to find a TA to replace Yohan. Before he can say anything, though, Yohan adds, “Seungyoun-hyung wants to see you in his office?” and wiggles his eyebrows like it’s funny, which Wooseok doesn’t really appreciate. Regardless, he thanks Yohan anyway, hands him the USB for the lecture, and asks him to keep on writing on the board before leaving.

Wooseok finds Seungyoun in his office, but he’s talking to Seungwoo. One of Seungyoun’s hands is pointing to his computer screen; the other is linked with Seungwoo’s. He knows they’re probably talking about physics or something to do with the physics department, but it makes him uncomfortable anyway, watching Seungyoun hook his index finger with Seungwoo’s and swing it absently while talking. Watching Seungwoo smile his closed-mouth smile, looking down at Seungyoun with wide, wide eyes.

That natural intimacy. That gentle air. _What you could’ve had_. Wooseok turns around without knocking and goes to find his coat. He sends a text to Yohan: _lecture is cancelled for today, please send out an email_.

“Why astrophysics?” was the question everyone asked him when he first picked his major in undergrad, “Why not engineering? Why not math or business? Wooseok, you’ve always been such a smart boy, why not pick something more useful?” And Wooseok never really had an answer to that_, _if he’s being honest, other than_ it felt right. _Because it did. There was something mysterious about it, he would have said, or something incredible about unlocking the secrets of the universe, or something equally as cliche as that.

After the _Produce _mission was announced, though, nobody asked that anymore. “Why astrophysics and not something better?” turned into “You must be so lucky to have this be happening in your lifetime,” and then usually a chuckle. “Imagine! Korea’s first astronauts. Have you met them?”

_Yes,_ he would usually say, _I work with them, actually_, and he would get claps on the back, sometimes a little applause. And then, “You’re so lucky,” again, “You must be so smart, so lucky.” And he gets it, sort of. It’s easier to appreciate something when it’s exciting, when it’s flashy, when it’s a promise, like KOREA SENDS FIRST ASTRONAUTS INTO SPACE, or MANNED MISSION OF FOUR SET FOR 2024. At the very least, nobody expects him to justify his reasons for studying astrophysics anymore, because they assume that’s it: the flashy promise, the exciting headline.

He was grateful for the eclipse of that mission. How do you explain that you’ve always felt lonely without sounding like a loser? How do you explain that knowing _there’s four hundred billion stars in the galaxy and a hundred billion galaxies in the universe and among those, planets and planets and maybe another something that’s maybe equally as lonely_ makes you feel a little bit less bad at being lonely?

Of course, there are easier parts to it. The space mission, press conferences, TV specials. The wonder you get when you see a thousand stars in the night sky, a thousand little pinpricks of light, or watching the tail of a meteor as it burns away for a glorious half-second: those are the easy parts, the beautiful parts, the parts people get when you mention them. But that’s not all of it.

Sometimes it’s too hard to put your love into words. Sometimes saying _I love it_ isn’t enough. Sometimes you’re not even brave enough to say it.

In dream Jinhyuk is cold like marble, his hands stiff and unwelcoming, his eyes fixed somewhere far away. When Wooseok presses longing fingers to his face he doesn’t blink, doesn’t breathe, doesn’t notice. His face is still and cold, and every time Wooseok’s hands slide off him stinging.

Wooseok is braver in dreams, though. He tries and tries again. “Please,” he whispers when he presses his face in the crook of Jinhyuk’s neck, wraps his arms around his waist. _Come on, come on, light me afire_. He kisses Jinhyuk’s neck at the Adam’s apple, runs his hands through Jinhyuk’s hair. Touches him. Pleads with him. In the end Wooseok’s always just hugging him, pressing himself as close as possible to him, never letting go of him, a thrum of _don’t go don’t go don’t go _echoing in his head.

In this dream Jinhyuk never touches him back, and every time Wooseok wakes up like he’s drowning. Gasping for air and hot all over. Crying, sometimes.

Every time Wooseok wakes up alone.

It’s raining outside when Wooseok gets up, the soft sound of water against his window a steady thrum. He exhales, presses his fingers to the bridge of his nose and rubs; he can already feel a headache building behind his eyes, the kind that leaves a bad feeling in your throat and makes it feel like it’s spinning when you move. He fumbles for his glasses on his nightstand, puts them on, checks the time. The display blinks back at him: 4:01 AM.

Inhale, exhale. Wooseok feels around for a pair of socks to put on—summer’s almost over now, and the floor is cold to walk on—and a sweater, before he staggers out of his bedroom.He forgot to draw the curtains on his kitchen window last night, and now the faint glow of LED signs from the street below flickers onto the grey walls of his kitchen. He doesn’t bother to turn on the light, instead crossing the room to stand at the window and stare down out of it.

The restaurant across the street still has its lights on, shadows over the red awning the color of blood. It’s different from the day, when it’s bright like fortune. Wooseok pulls out his phone to check his email and turns away to go find his notes for the seminar he’s teaching later.

“Hey, Seok,” says Seungyoun, first thing when he walks by his office in the morning. “I didn’t see you yesterday. Did your kid tell you to come by?”

Wooseok freezes, racking his still-scrambled brains for an answer before he remembers Yohan telling him. “Yeah, Yohan did. I had to go somewhere, though, so I couldn’t make it.” A white lie, an easy pause. “Are you free now?”

Seungyoun nods. “Yeah, it’s really quick. Big news, though, so you might wanna grab a chair.” It takes Wooseok a minute to register, so he just stays standing. Seungyoun goes on: “Remember the _Produce _mission? How it turned out?”

Wooseok’s mouth goes dry. “I don’t want to talk about that,” he says, almost instantly. Seungyoun’s expression falls.

“Sorry,” he says, his voice softer. “I get it. But listen—they think it’s not over. That we can still find them. They’re asking the university for our research team, and—“

And Wooseok doesn’t hear anything more from Seungyoun. The radio broadcast he still remembers: _four astronauts selected from four hundred to become Korea’s first_. The newspapers stacking up, each one reading_ A Safe Journey To The Nation’s Chosen_. The banners outside the university, with their names: KIM NAYOUNG and KIM JONGHYUN and LEE GAEUN and

_LEE JINHYUK_

and he can vaguely feel Seungyoun’s hands on his shoulders, tapping him, asking him if he’s alright, but all he can think about is that banner, that stupid banner with Jinhyuk’s name on it and how widely Jinhyuk had smiled when Wooseok had presented it.

In his head he sees a supernova blow, a spill of light across a black sky.

In his head he sees a boy under the awning as it rains. His smile is like the sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again, drop your twt if you wanna chat! please! I need x1 friends, and space friends, and LJH friends, and friends in general. I've been with a lot of work lately but I'll always make time to talk !! 
> 
> I'm really excited to continue on with this. thank you for all your support and kudos and comments!!

**Author's Note:**

> looking at maybe 10k, 12k words for this... incredibly excited to have space lovemailing hours. & Jinhyuk lovemailing hours. 
> 
> drop a comment if you wanna talk on twt! when will ao3 get dms...


End file.
